The Ship That Never Made it Home
by Jackie Guardian
Summary: The Doctor and Ace stumble across a mining ship in deep space. But can The Doctor help the stranded crew mates or can they help him?


The central column of The TARDIS rose and fell gently as the rest of the console quietly hummed to itself. The Doctor surveyed the scene with what could be described as pride. After all, it wasn't just _any_ TARDIS it was _his_ TARDIS, the best ship in the universe...or so The Doctor liked to say. The light in the room throbbed, it didn't seem to come from anywhere in particular but it still lit up the surroundings. The Doctor supposed the room was octagonal, but he always tried not to think about it, every time he tried to count he would see a different number of walls. The TARDIS was just like that. The circular roundels on the walls seemed catch the movement of the light and the coat stand in the corner stood silently holding The Doctor's hat and umbrella.

The Doctor let out a small smile and absent-mindedly touched his seventh head of hair which seemed to be curly again. "Ahh Ace!" He said in his soft Scottish accent as his blond haired companion entered the console room. As usual she was sporting her leather jacket with her sewn-on badges and a skirt with red tights. She grinned. "Hello Professor!" The Doctor smiled back, he was never quite sure why she called him that but he oddly liked it. "Where we off today?" Ace said happily, her cockney accent proudly making itself heard.  
"Well Ace, there is talk in dirtiest, crummiest space bars of the renegade sector..." The Doctor strode over to an excited Ace whilst gesturing to the open space behind the walls. "Talk of something, hidden in cold reaches of deep space, something that has value incomprehensible to almost everybody and anybody."  
"What is it?!" The Doctor enjoyed piquing Ace's interest as he smiled at the excitement in her eyes.  
"I don't know," he said softly "Shall we find out?" The Doctor grinned and started inputting commands into the console as the ship began to materialise.

* * *

"So what is this again?" Cat asked in his high pitched questioning tone.  
"It's Spherical Quantum Hockey!" Lister had answered the question several times over the last few minutes. He hadn't been trying to pay attention too hard, but Cat butting in was really getting to him. "But I don't get it!" Cat continued, his screwed up face remained fixed to the screen. "You would have thought it would be easier without the sticks!"  
"CAT!" Lister said loudly in an irritated voice. Cat turned his head to look at Lister and was about to reply when Rimmer walked into the room. The way his dead bunk mate walked into rooms, made Lister's skin crawl; all smug and stuck up. "I'm going for a nap anyway," Cat stood up and looked around at the catastrophe of Lister's living quarters before leaving "Do you know how tiring it is listening to you?!"  
"Honestly there are more brain cells in an average GELF sneeze than in Cat's head." Rimmer drawled as the feline creature exited. "What do you want Rimmer?" Lister asked in a resigned Liverpudlian accent as he finally gave up trying to watch the hockey. "I'd only come to tell you that Kryten has got his head stuck down the B deck toilet again. He said he was trying to clean the U-bend." Rimmer paused a shook his head with a small chuckle. "He was literally made for that one purpose, and he can't even do that!" Rimmer chuckled again and got a small pad out of his top pocket. "I better write this in my report; if we ever get off this rusty hell hole I'm going to demand compensation for that neurotic mechanical bog-brush."  
"I'll go rescue him then shall I? Smeg head." Lister muttered the last bit under his breath at the hologram who was happily humming away and writing away in his notepad.

B deck was a short walk. Luckily it wasn't far; you could spend weeks travelling through the mining ship that Lister had to call home. It was mostly empty as well, it used to have a crew but a drive-plate accident had occurred, with Lister being the only surviving member. Nowadays there was the four of them; Lister, the hologram Rimmer, evolutionary miracle Cat and a droid they picked up along the way.

Lister rapped his knuckles on the door to the toilets "Kryten man, you alright?"  
"Oh Mr Lister sir! This is most embarrassing!" He heard very faintly through the door.  
"Hang on Kryten." Lister smiled, it _was_ funny. "That'll do nicely!" Lister spotted an old lead pipe on a heap of junk nearby and picked it up. Feeling the weight of it in his hands took him back to 'scrumping' days before he had enrolled with JMC. Lister opened the door to reveal the Android's grey mechanical behind, with his head concealed from view. "Kryten," Lister smiled again "How many times do I have to tell you that you don't need to clean behind the U-bend?" The poor droid was getting on a bit; he had spent a long time on the Nova 5 before they had picked him up and he only seemed to get more erratic with Lister trying to break his programming. "Right hold still Kryten, you won't like this!" Lister thought he heard Kryten say something in a muffled discomfort, but ignored him, swinging the lead pipe and bringing it into contact with the side of the porcelain toilet. With a crack the toilet bowl broke and water started spraying everywhere. Kryten fell to the floor with an aghast look on his face. "Thank you Mr Lister sir, I wasn't sure how much more of that I could take. A new voice joined the pair in the mess of the B deck toilets. "Oi what do you think you two are doing? You can't just wreck the place!" The female voice paused. "You should get up to the drive room anyway, I've picked something up on the scanner."


End file.
